Originally posted by Washington PostMcGruder, a Columbia native who in his twenties became the Garry Trudeau of the hip-hop generation, took a sabbatical six months ago to recharge. The syndicate kept checking with him, reminding him that its newspaper clients needed several weeks in order to prepare for his return or his departure.

Apparently, the mind behind young black radicals Huey and Riley Freeman has gone Hollywood, or at least has further hopes of doing so, and has decided he can't devote himself to the grind of a daily strip. His late-night animated show, "The Boondocks," on the Cartoon Network was recently renewed for another season, the first-season DVD is out, and a film is reportedly in the works.

And later in the article...

Originally posted by Washington Post"Although Aaron McGruder has made no statement about retiring or resuming The Boondocks for print newspapers... newspapers should not count on it coming back in the foreseeable future," Universal's president, Lee Salem, said in the release. "Numerous attempts... to pin McGruder down on a date that the strip would be coming back were unsuccessful."

If this is the case, I'd like to say that it Fucking Sucks, but it's not like Boondocks itself is gone. The comics page at the local paper just got a lot less funny (although if the Boondocks is done, maybe now they'll pull Mallard Fillmore, which should make said page a whole lot funnier).

But really, can you blame the guy? His animated endeavors have taken off, and if he does step away and decides to come back later, they'd have him back at UPI and, presumably, so would his readers.

Here's something a friend and I were discussing the other day. Can you name one good thing that has come out of Countdown? At least at the end of 52, there were some new things that were interesting (or had the potential to be). Evil Mary Marvel?